A blog for Literature and Culture of the Middles Ages (ENGL:3226:0001)

Monday, October 6, 2014

The Jewry and the Quarter: Dunmer as Medieval Jewish Allegory in TES V: Skyrim

Allegory is everything to fantasy
storytelling, and nowhere in modern fantasy does racial and ethnic
allegory loom larger than in Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls series.
Connections between the races of Tamriel and those of Earth have long
been drawn, and these connections and theories range from the
insightful to the strange to the ignorant. At risk of being
classified as the latter, I seek to prove that the diasporic Dunmer
who appear in TES V: Skyrim can serve as allegory for the Jews
who lived in medieval Europe. A close reading of one particular
geographic location in the game—the city of Windhelm's Gray
quarter—will provide most of my evidence and points of discussion.

Dunmer woman and man, as seen in TES V: Skyrim. Photo courtesy The Elder Scrolls Wiki.

The Dunmer, otherwise called Dark
Elves, are a race of Elven people based out of the nation of
Morrowind who also live in diasporic communities abroad. Like the
Jews depicted in anti-semitic middle and late medieval illuminations,
the Dunmer are dark-skinned, their facial features more dramatic and
severe than their Nord counterparts (who play the role of medieval
Christians in this allegory). Ancestry is pivotal to Dunmer culture,
holding a kind of cult status, and the race maintains a sense of
tight religious and ethnic community due to a racial history of both
triumph and affliction.

Nowhere is the Dunmer-Jewish allegory
more evident than in the ghetto that is the Gray Quarter, a narrow
street in the city of Windhelm where all of the city's Dunmer
citizenry have been corralled (the name of the quarter derives from
the skin color of its inhabitants, who are made out to be racial
Others by the city's human majority). The street is almost a carbon
copy of the many Jewry Lanes once present in Europe, streets to which
all Jewish citizens were relegated to work and do business.

The Dunmer are not natives of Windhelm,
having been driven to the nation of Skyrim as refugees by a
catastrophic volcanic eruption. A Nord historian, his racial biases
evident in his writing, calls these newcomers a “lazy, discontented
rabble,” accusing them of generating unrest and bringing their
bizarre, “native customs” into the city.

The characters who inhabit the Gray
Quarter, however, are the ones who bring the allegory to life,
complicating a simple academic comparison with their lived
experiences.

Players may speak to a Dunmer
pawnbroker in the Gray Quarter, an elf by the name of Aval Atheron,
whose occupation problematically coincides with medieval Jewish
stereotypes but whose power to voice his own experiences gives him an
advantage over the two-dimensional Jews in medieval British
literature. Aval expresses his discontent at the treatment he and the
other Dunmer receive, informing the player that the Nords “don't
let my kind live anywhere outside that slum.” Jews in medieval
Britain and much of Europe were required by law to live on the
assigned Jewry Lane or face harsh repercussions—for the most part,
the same seems to be true of the Dunmer.

Another encounter—this one with
Aval's sister Suvaris Atheron—shows the player just what kind of
treatment Dunmer face in Windhelm. When the player first enters the
city, (s)he sees Suvaris harassed by Nord citizens who accuse her of
being a spy and threaten, “Maybe we'll pay you a visit tonight,
little spy,” a threat with disturbing sexual implications as well
as racial. When the player speaks with her, Suvaris replies that the
Nords “come up with any excuse to despise us.” Such was the
common fate of Jews in medieval Europe, who were villainized in
Christian nations as well-poisoners and child-murderers, among other
things.

Problematic to this allegory, however,
are the Dunmer characters in Windhelm's Gray Quarter who openly
embody the stereotypes of medieval Jews. Revyn Sadri, for instance,
owns a pawnshop in the Gray Quarter and acquires his goods through
nefarious means. This “greedy Dunmer” mirrors the “greedy Jew”
archetype depicted in “Theophilus” and other medieval sources.
Likewise, the innkeeper Ambarys Rendar expresses an open hatred for
the Nords and shows little concern even at their deaths, a fact which
brings to mind the malicious, scheming Jewish characters in “The
Miracle of the Boy Singer” and other Marian miracle stories.

These instances aside, I do not feel
The Elder Scrolls set out to create a malicious or entrapped
image of Dunmer-as-tormented-Jews nor that—beyond the walls of the Gray
Quarter—this allegory holds up. Other Dunmer
in Skyrim, including a few who live just outside the walls of
Windhelm, live free of the same persecution faced by the ghetto Dunmer and without malice toward the Nords. Their ancient history and the majority of their modern culture share few common features with that of Europe's Jews. That the Dunmer of Skyrim and the Jews depicted
in medieval Christian literature share so similarities may be an
accident on the part of the game developers or a product of my own over-active imagination. Yet such allegories may
prove fruitful for those who wish to better relate the fantasy world
to human history, just so long as these allegories are made in
fairness and with a critical eye.

1 comment:

This is interesting. I think the Dunmers ancient culture, their diaspora, their ability to survive in desert climates and the Orientalist stereotypes lurking in a lot of Elf content in Skyrim overall (the Altmer are literally yellow) make it seem almost too obvious in hindsight.. Thanks for your post!